Grandpa, tell me about the old days...

[UltraAlt]

1 hour ago, MHertz said:

I also remember when capes and auras were added. I know you went to a lot of work to prove me wrong somehow, but I know which issue it was and when I showed up.

 

No. Not to prove you wrong.

And it wasn't that hard to look up the facts of when that went on.

 

 

[Lusiphur Malache]

I started shortly after launch.  Tankers were gods, and empaths never had to ask for a group.  You did one sewer run and remembered the name of everyone you did it with.  Especially if you made it all the way to the exit in Kings Row I think.  If you were dumb enough to make a blaster, like me, your mistakes were magnified 10x and you kept making them over and over.

 

Then ED happened and that's all I'll say about that.

 

First time I seen a Kheldian, I was like cool, need to get to 50 so I can be one of them.  First time seeing a shadow cyst, fuck, not again, fuck me again, I don't team with squids. could happen on 1 mission.

 

I was determined to become a blapper, despite almost everyone telling me that wasn't my job.

 

Finding out that Masterminds, not Brutes, were designed to be the tank AT for redside

[TheOtherTed]

I started some time after Issue 6, and much of what I could say has already been said.  However, the one thing I remember most is the team-friendly nature of the game.  Not just in terms of design, but also in terms of the players.

 

On the design front, there's no quibbling over loot, no such thing as a "useless" AT, and the game introduced the first level-matching system I'd ever known about (and for a long time, the only one I'd ever seen).  Granted, that first system was a bit clumsy and open to exploitation, but at least there was an attempt to get different level players together.

 

On the people front, in my experience it was pretty rare to have a truly "bad" team.  Borderline incompetent teams, sure, but that just meant more jokes to be made and stories to be told.   Sometimes the game would surreptitiously change from "Beat Down the Bad Guys" to "Keep Character X Alive."  Plus, there was often that magical moment when seemingly bad teams just sort of fell into a groove, almost by accident, and became a force of destruction.

 

I'm sure people will say that's all still true, but before the sun started to set, I noticed a steady trickle of players who came in with expecations gained in other, bigger MMOs.  More and more people had the attitude that a team "needs" a "healer," or needs a tank - and, along with that, a surprising amount of people would blame the tanks or "healers" for not doing their jobs.  Other vets may remember otherwise, but I remember people being pointlessly and unnecessarily combative about who should have been doing what when, and quitting with bitter parting words when a relative old-timer like me would say "We can make this work" and why.

 

Not a happy note to end on, maybe, but I remember my teaming experiences in those first few years quite fondly.

[FeeFyeFoeFum]

22 minutes ago, TheOtherTed said:

 

 

I'm sure people will say that's all still true, but before the sun started to set, I noticed a steady trickle of players who came in with expecations gained in other, bigger MMOs.  More and more people had the attitude that a team "needs" a "healer," or needs a tank - and, along with that, a surprising amount of people would blame the tanks or "healers" for not doing their jobs.  Other vets may remember otherwise, but I remember people being pointlessly and unnecessarily combative about who should have been doing what when, and quitting with bitter parting words when a relative old-timer like me would say "We can make this work" and why.

 

 

 

I did notice towards the end of my play time on live that people seemed to get a lot more fixated and stressed about debt. Personally it never bothered me, all it did was slow you down and it would vanish pretty quickly but after an unsuccessful encounter and a team wipe or two, the team chat would often descend into finger pointing, shouting and then people just quitting the team.

 

On more than one occasion I remember having to switch to a level 50. so I could help the 'debt ridden' members of a failed AV mish into one of my missions and just blitz through it, erasing their debt and giving them a boost after it was gone.

 

Never understood it meself, far as I was concerned it was just working towards another badge *shrug* 

[srmalloy]

8 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

There's usually some BP in the city area, and the open area NE of that is crawling with DE.  Just went and looked, and you're right - the BP have vanished.  Will have to remember to file a bug report.

The Banished Pantheon spawn at night; during the day, the area is a ghost town -- even the Warriors and Freakshow don't extend their spawns into the area during the day.

[srmalloy]

17 hours ago, BazookaTwo said:

My first toon was Bazooka Tooth, an AR/EM toon. I thought knockback was great fun, and caused lots of team wipes. But I also recall when boost range was ridiculous, and I'd hang out as far away from the Kronos as possible and try to get the kill shot with like a half mile boost range. 

My first was an AR/EM, too. I built her as an experiment to see if Jack Emmert's claim that "range was a Blaster's defense" was true, and until every mob got handed a ranged attack it was mostly true. Unfortunately with that change, instituted to deprecate hover-blasting with impunity, too many mobs got attacks that outranged a Snipe with Boost Range active. Still, it was fun to stand on the platform near Imperious in Cimerora and snipe mobs in the courtyard across the valley to the north.

[Luminara]

Scrapper secondary and tanker primary toggles were mutually exclusive.  Turn on the status protection toggle, whichever damage mitigation toggle you had active was toggled off.  Turn on a damage mitigation toggle, you lose your status protection.  Melee characters were expected to figure out what kind of damage different attacks did and switch toggles on the fly.  That didn't work, of course, since spawns could contain critters with a variety of damage types, and combat was too rapid to juggle toggles (which still had long activation times, so switching toggles also meant being locked out of attacking until the toggle's animation was complete).

Everything mezzed.  Everything.  There was so much mez that even tankers could be mezzed through their status protection when they were teamed with one other person.  Mez was over-used to such a degree that Cryptic had to comb through every critter attack and tone it down, and change spawn definitions to limit the number of strong mez critters.

 

Because of those two aspects, teaming was vital.  Scrappers and tankers needed controllers and defenders to give them the extra damage mitigation and status protection they needed to survive.  Controllers and defenders needed blasters, scrappers and tankers to deal damage for them.  Blasters needed everyone.

 

No inherents.  Scrappers could crit with some attacks, not all.  No Beginner's Luck, either.  Or origin-specific starter attacks.  No Day Jobs.  No patrol XP.  The only temporary powers were the ones granted in missions, and most of them expired when the mission or arc ended, or had real world timers.  Most of the timers that last for X time in-game were real world timers, too, which discouraged logging out and going to bed if you had something on a timer.

 

No Real Numbers.  No information on anything.  The only thing known about powers was what was in the brief description.  That applied to enemy powers, too, there was no City of Data or Power Analyzer, all anyone had to go on was speculation and rudimentary testing.  That led to the creation of BI, the Brawl Index, a rough estimation of how much damage different attacks dealt by comparing them to Brawl.  It was inaccurate, because it didn't account for (then unknown) archetype scalars and modifiers, but it was all anyone had at the time.

 

Melee-range powers with KD now, those used to be KB.  Cryptic felt that having a lot of KB in melee attacks would give the game the most super-heroic vibe, so they were liberal with it.  They were so attached to it, they increased the magnitude in most of the powers, so attacks would knock critters farther away.

 

Endurance costs were higher across the board.  Level 20 was a Big Deal because it meant you could finally pick up Stamina (pool T4 powers didn't unlock until level 20, and Fitness was a power pool at that time) and weren't stopping constantly.

 

Defense stacked by type and vector.  If an enemy with Smite attacked you and you had 13% Smashing Defense and 7% Negative Energy Defense, you had a total 20% Defense to that attack roll.  That'd be over-powered now, but at that time, critters had a 75% base hit chance, not the 50% they have now, so that approach to Defense stacking was necessary.

 

Fear powers made targets run away.  They always came back as soon as the Fear expired, but it was ultimately more effective than a comparably slotted Hold or Stun, in terms of damage mitigation, even though it was also more annoying.

 

Critter AI was more stable.  Taunt actually worked, and even if you weren't using Taunt, Challenge, Provoke or something similar, they'd stick to a player character like glue unless the character was out of range or Taunted off.  Around Issue 16, something went haywire, or the script/code was altered, and critters panicking and running away when they were debuffed, couldn't hit a target or combat lasted more than 3 seconds, that's when that started happening.

 

There were Cone enhancements, Endurance Drain enhancements, and a couple of others I forget, which were folded into existing enhancements which did the same thing.

 

Speaking of enhancements, Power 10.  Ten of the enhancement types were flagged to drop more frequently (Endurance Reduction had the highest drop rate), and until you completely unlocked a contact (ran almost all of the missions), those ten were the only enhancement types you were offered.  Finding and getting to a store that sold non-Power 10 enhancements was a priority, if you could afford to buy enhancements.  And a lot of us were still using DOs in powers well into the 30's, for no reason other than because that's what dropped and drops were the only way we could get them, unless we could get friends to trade with us.

 

And HOs enhanced attributes by 50%, not 33%.  A Cytoskeleton Exposure enhanced Endurance Reduction, ToHit and Defense by 50%/50%/50%.  Six-slotting any power with HOs was ridiculously strong.  And you got a HO for every bud you defeated, not one per player when the main mass was destroyed.  Some players would leave with a full tray of HOs (we only had 10 enhancement tray slots then, not 70), while others wouldn't get any.

Yeah, different enhancement schedules didn't come until later, after Cryptic felt like they were starting to lose control of balance... which was only occurring because they kept changing things, like removing toggle mutual exclusivity, reducing base critter hit chances and altering how Defense stacked, buffing powers, etc.  Stuff that wasn't over the top suddenly went there, leading to a categorization of enhancement types into schedules, each schedule having a different base value, and HOs being specifically targeted.

Status protection inspirations didn't exist.  When they were added, they had to be use pro-actively, before you were mezzed.  They couldn't be clicked when you were mezzed.

 

There were a lot of missions, scattered amongst standard contacts, which couldn't be completed without one or more other players.  They had simultaneous click objectives that required a team to complete.  Real bitch when you were soloing and ran into one of these.  And we couldn't drop or auto-complete missions, either, we either had to go find people to help, or just ignore them until we could find a team.

 

Three story arc limit.  If you tried to get a mission from a contact and were already at that limit, the contact wouldn't speak to you.  And since just checking the story arc, not actually accepting the first mission, locked you into the arc, it was common for players to have one or two out-leveled contacts with story arcs active, effectively locking them out of content unless they ran the out-leveled arcs.

 

You had to perform numerous non-arc missions before a contact would offer you a story arc.  And you had to run back to the contact every time, the call button wasn't unlocked until the contact's rep bar was nearly filled.

 

No Exit Mission button.  You could exit by clicking Mission Complete in the nav window, but it wasn't intuitive and a lot of people ran back to the mission entrance.

 

The tutorial was mandatory.  You didn't set foot into Atlas Park or Galaxy City until you'd been through Outbreak.  And if you finished Outbreak without defeating 100 Contaminated, you were permanently locked out of the Isolator badge.

 

Critters could be "tagged", any damage dealt by any player would lock all others out of gaining XP, influence or drops.  People would tag critters solo and let high level players defeat them as a means of power-leveling, so Cryptic changed that to XP and inf* being awarded for the amount of damage dealt.

 

Bored defenders and controllers filled AP and GC, following lowbies around and buffing them or debuffing enemies.  Tankers and scrappers would do the same thing with Taunts.

 

Task Forces were a commitment.  They took hours, sometimes all day.  Teams would stop in the middle of a TF and call it a night, then pick it up the next day.  If two or three people quit, the TF would have to be abandoned and restarted, because they didn't scale with team size.

 

Ambushes did scale to team size.  An army of ambushers could spawn for a full team, or, after the difficulty adjustment field agents were added, a solo players set to maximum difficulty.  You'd see a bunch of level 50 critters standing around, surrounded by dead lowbies at a tram station, which didn't have police drones.  People would come off of the tram and be instantly pancaked, or run in only to discover a world of pain waiting, and since they didn't despawn, the only thing anyone could do was call it out and hope a 50 would come clean it up, or switch to a 50 yourself and do it.

 

No Elite Bosses.  You'd be cruising along, doing well enough against the bosses, then slam face-first into an AV that flattened you with one hit, because there was also no anti-one-shot code.

 

Toggles had ongoing sound effects.  On a full team, it was the equivalent of setting a kindergarten class loose in a kitchen filled with pots, pans, foghorns, whistles and steam organs.

 

Navigating the city required memorization of which trams went where, which zone exits led where and how they all interconnected.  Since contacts sent you all over the city for missions, figuring out the fastest route was always important.

No police scanner missions, no banks to protect, no tips.  If you weren't on a story arc, performing missions to unlock a story arc, or teamed, you were street sweeping because you had nothing else.

 

Those little spinning coins over contacts, they didn't exist.  Neither did a lot of map waypoints.  For the stuff that did have a waypoint, you could use the nav bar, and for the rest, you had to remember where they were or stumble across them.  No Vidiotmaps, either.  /loc was your friend.

 

No Mids'.  Pencil and paper or wing it.

 

Lots of servers, only a few character slots per server.  Since there wasn't much to do after hitting 50, other than attend Hami raids, farm or PL friends, everyone made alts, and once you alt, you can't stop, so people spread out across different servers pretty rapidly as they filled their character slots.

Controller and defender Slow values were mistakenly swapped before launch, and it wasn't caught until well after, which led to the impression that Slows were controls.  When Cryptic finally got around to addressing the problem, they just increased the defender scalar to the correct value and left controllers with the same scalar.

Six-slotted Hurdle was faster than Fly.  Almost no-one knew about that because they took Swift instead of Hurdle when they opened up the Fitness pool.

 

Slotting Freezing Rain with Damage SOs increased the -Res.

 

Lieutenants in the 5th Column and Council turned into boss Warwolves.

 

/e alakazamreact was a persistent animation when it was added, it turned you into a pumpkin and you stayed that way until you pressed a movement key.

 

Foce of Nature.

[srmalloy]

20 minutes ago, Luminara said:

You had to perform numerous non-arc missions before a contact would offer you a story arc.  And you had to run back to the contact every time, the call button wasn't unlocked until the contact's rep bar was nearly filled.

There is a remnant of this still visible in the game. Open your contacts window and look at the progress bar for each contact. There are two vertical lines across each progress bar; you didn't get the contact's phone number until you filled the bar to the first line, and they wouldn't offer you their full set of enhancements until you filled the bar to the second line.

[PLVRIZR]

18 hours ago, Frostbiter said:

Boomtown was in the game since launch. The Hollows was added in Issue 2 September 2004.

 

...but it was called "Baumtown". 😉  I have the retail release map to prove it.

[Frostbiter]

Just now, PLVRIZR said:

 

...but it was called "Baumtown". 😉  I have the retail release map to prove it.

 

The original map had all of the Hazard Zones with their real names.

[PLVRIZR]

47 minutes ago, Frostbiter said:

 

The original map had all of the Hazard Zones with their real names.

Like this?

 

 

CoH Game Map_Manual_bw scan.pdf

[Frostbiter]

46 minutes ago, PLVRIZR said:

Like this?

 

 

CoH Game Map_Manual_bw scan.pdf 343.63 kB · 4 downloads

 

Yes, exactly like how I said it did. The retail maps still have them named that way.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Frostbiter

[Doc_Scorpion]

3 hours ago, srmalloy said:

The Banished Pantheon spawn at night; during the day, the area is a ghost town

I coulda sworn I've seen them there during the day...

[BazookaTwo]

Clearly I was wrong about Baumtown. My baud

[Chi]

Dark Astoria had parts where you fell in holes and need teleporters 

and the birth of Bunny Hopping was needed and occasionally would work. 

Also classic holes some how in Talos where you were under the map and need teleporters help . 

[Frostbiter]

22 minutes ago, BazookaTwo said:

Clearly I was wrong about Baumtown. My baud

 

No worries. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes. It was a long time ago.

[cranebump]

Ditto on watching teams travel across the zones. Now that I’m older I miss the break between mishes. You get some of that when you’re humping to each kill all in the new Pos. The other day I was on my groundbound gun toter. It was cool to watch the flyers zoom above, the TPers popping in and out, while the rest of us sprinted and hopped here and there. Really gives that “here we come!” feeling. That’s part of the whole super thing, too, ain’t it? 

[tidge]

On 2/13/2023 at 4:32 PM, PLVRIZR said:

Was not on Beta, but bought the retail version on launch...pre-I1.  Still have the game manual (and welcome map...with Baumtown, Overbrook, Venice and Woodvale as zones) and remember the monthly subscription.  This thread is a reminder that it *was* a different game, geared to keeping you on the "hook".  Long slow grinds were the intent.  I fondly remember herding entire maps, but don't miss the tanker powers that kept you stationary (literally immovable), as in Rooted (Stone) and Unyielding Stance (Inv).

 

This was me: Not in Beta, but waiting for release day... and OMG the waits on assorted downloads! (Also me, Invuln tanker, stuck in place, watching the fire Tanks earn insta-XP from DE Swarms.)

 

I have a LOT of memories, but the one thing that really stands out to me as a work on leveling a blue-sider by turning off XP and hitting as many of the OG contacts as possible for missions is how much more enjoyable the game got with Veteran rewards, especially means of cross-zone travel that did not involve the CTA trains.

[TheOtherTed]

6 hours ago, BazookaTwo said:

baud

A term that was still kind of relevant when the game launched.  I think CoH was the first online game for which I used broadband instead of a dial-up connection.

[Troo]

On 2/12/2023 at 5:49 PM, GastlyGibus said:

Grandpa, tell me about the old days...

 

Grandpa, tell me a story!
All right, go and get your storybook
No, no, not one of those, a real story!
A real story?
Yes! Tell me about when you were a boy.
Well, then, I shall have to take you back a long way in time...
 

[Bionic_Flea]

I was trying to figure out when I started and I think it is either late Issue 0 or early Issue 1. 

 

I bought the game in the Summer of 2004 while grocery shopping at WalMart as I thought it was a sequel to Freedom Force.  As you can see, the covers were a little similar.

 

Anyway, I was excited to play but then realized it was a subscription-based game and was more than a little angry.  I didn't want or need another monthly expense and felt a bit duped and a bit stupid for not reading the box carefully.  So it sat on my shelf for a month or two.  But then I figured I had a free month and should go ahead and use that since I had paid for the box.

 

I made Bionic Flea and logged into Justice server.  I went with Invulnerable and Super-Strength because that's a classic superhero pairing and I knew I was going to use the Jump pool, because flea's don't fly!  I logged into Atlas Park and was overwhelmed.  This was my first and only MMO.  I saw xXWolverineXx and a bunch of other knock offs but also a lot of unique looking heroes running around.  I had no idea what to do and finally figured out how to say so in broadcast.  Someone was kind and invited me and spent an hour showing me the basics.  A few others laughed at the "noob" -- I didn't know what that meant at the time.

 

I wanted to get my money's worth so I played an hour or two every night after work.  Initially, I was playing on dial-up, so logging into missions took a literal minute or two.  Sometimes I didn't realize but I had been booted because someone called on the phone while I was playing.  Due to my dial-up and noobishness, I soloed most of the time.  I remember learning that exiting a mission filled my health and endurance back so I would run and and mash buttons as long as I could stay alive and then run for the door . . . and then go to the restroom and grab a drink as I loaded out and back in.  I remember not taking Unyielding Stance because how stupid is it to not be able to move!  I picked up acrobatics instead and just took the beating when I got mezzed . . . then ran for the door.

 

The first month flew by and I never cancelled so I was automatically billed for another month and kept going until sunset, with a few years of paying for two accounts.  It took Bionic Flea four or five months to get to level 50.  And in those few months I made friends that I played with almost every night.  I joined their SG, Dream Team, which I remade here.  Hamidon raids were slideshows attended by 200 or so players.  I didn't mind the slideshow because that gave us plenty of time to chat and joke.  I didn't participate in the forums until about a year after first joining.  That just added another flavor to my addiction, I could play at night and learn about the game or chat with other addicts during the day.  And here I still am almost 20 years later.

Edited February 17, 2023 by Bionic_Flea

[JasperStone]

2 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I was trying to figure out when I started and I think it is either late Issue 0 or early Issue 1. 

 

I bought the game in the Summer of 2004 while grocery shopping at WalMart as I thought it was a sequel to Freedom Force.  As you can see, the covers were a little similar.

 

Anyway, I was excited to play but then realized it was a subscription-based game and was more than a little angry.  I didn't want or need another monthly expense and felt a bit duped and a bit stupid for not reading the box carefully.  So it sat on my shelf for a month or two.  But then I figured I had a free month and should go ahead and use that since I had paid for the box.

 

I made Bionic Flea and logged into Justice server.  I went with Invulnerable and Super-Strength because that's a classic superhero pairing and I knew I was going to use the Jump pool, because flea's don't fly!  I logged into Atlas Park and was overwhelmed.  This was my first and only MMO.  I saw xXWolverineXx and a bunch of other knock offs but also a lot of unique looking heroes running around.  I had no idea what to do and finally figured out how to say so in broadcast.  Someone was kind and invited me and spent an hour showing me the basics.  A few others laughed at the "noob" -- I didn't know what that meant at the time.

 

I wanted to get my money's worth so I played an hour or two every night after work.  Initially, I was playing on dial-up, so logging into missions took a literal minute or two.  Sometimes I didn't realize but I had been booted because someone called on the phone while I was playing.  Due to my dial-up and noobishness, I soloed most of the time.  I remember learning that exiting a mission filled my health and endurance back so I would run and and mash buttons as long as I could stay alive and then run for the door . . . and then go to the restroom and grab a drink as I loaded out and back in.  I remember not taking Unyielding Stance because how stupid is it to not be able to move!  I picked up acrobatics instead and just took the beating when I got mezzed . . . then ran for the door.

 

The first month flew by and I never cancelled so I was automatically billed for another month and kept going until sunset, with a few years of paying for two accounts.  It took Bionic Flea four or five months to get to level 50.  And in those few months I made friends that I played with almost every night.  I joined their SG, Dream Team, which I remade here.  Hamidon raids were slideshows attended by 200 or so players.  I didn't mind the slideshow because that gave us plenty of time to chat and joke.  I didn't participate in the forums until about a year after first joining.  That just added another flavor to my addiction, I could play at night and learn about the game or chat with other addicts during the day.  And here I still am almost 20 years later.

I bought Freedom Force!

Interesting game...more of a LAN then MMO

 

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I bought the game in the Summer of 2004 while grocery shopping at WalMart as I thought it was a sequel to Freedom Force.  As you can see, the covers were a little similar.

 

Well, one has the obvious Jack "the King" Kirby vibe, but aside from that ...yeah I can see it.

 

2 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

So it sat on my shelf for a month or two.

 

I bought the game before I even had a computer that could run it. I was super excited. I spend hours reading the book in the box and planning out my heroes while I saved up money to buy the parts to build the computer to play the game. A great friend of mine for many a century... er... decade? ...helped me construct the computer. (I swear to the great Creator that I thought they were going to crack the memory boards in half when they were inserting them.) [I was ever so more careful when I was Frankenstein'ing my Amigas].

 

I remember getting in and making my first character. I ran around for a while and leveled some, but then it was time to exit the game. I couldn't figure you how to do it.

There was no /save or /exit option!

There was this "quit" option. I didn't want to "quit" the game! I wanted it to save my character and keep the game installed! Argh!

[Help] Total Noob: How do I log out of the game?

[Help] Super Something: Just type /quit.

[Help] Total Noob: I don't want to quit, I just want to save my character and log out.

[Help] Super Something: Just type /quit

[Help] Helpful Defender: You don't have to worry. You can type /quit and it will save your character. You'll zone back in where you quit out of the game.

[Help] Support Squishy: It's true. You'll be okay. Just type /quit or use the menu quit option. It will be okay.

 

I was losing it. I was in a cold sweat. What happens if I'm wrong .... but then I did it. I quit.

And when I logged back in. Everything was fine. My character was there. It save the progress! Amazing!

And I promptly make about 6 or 8 characters that second play session. 

[lemming]

I screwed around with Beta and it convinced me to go ahead and dual boot my Linux machine to be able to play.

Super Vixen was my first char, a fire/fire blaster, though a claws/regen scrapper and a Inv/SS tank followed soon after.  All based on Champions characters and while the initial though was to start on Champion, wound up on Justice.  Wound up with SGs on every server due to alts.

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

I bought the game before I even had a computer that could run it. I was super excited. I spend hours reading the book in the box and planning out my heroes while I saved up money to buy the parts to build the computer to play the game.

*nods*  I got the game for Christmas (after broadly hinting to my wife)...  and the computer I had at the time would just barely run CoX at it's lowest setting.   And most battles were slideshows...

About the fourth or fifth time I ran Frostie...  Standing there (because, slideshow) in the first big room battle (where the first altar is), I simply had had enough.  Was already planning on upgrading the computer, but that made me move the schedule up by months.  I absolutely had to have a computer that could reasonably run the game.

Oddly enough, that was also the Christmas she gave me my first handheld GPS - because I wanted to try geocaching, and smartphones with a GPS weren't a thing back then.  Found out that geocaching is fun, and we're still regular cachers today.  And I'm still in the City today.